Social dilemmas are at the core of day-to-day social interactions, besides some of the most challenging issues of society such as the reduction of CO2 emissions, tax-compliance or warfare. The study of how humans decide in face of social dilemmas and why, is the object of study of Psychologists, Experimental Economists, Sociologists and many other social scientists.
The formal relations involved in social dilemmas can be captured by models of game theory. Game theory allows modelling such social situations as games, that is, mathematical abstractions, deliberately simple, corresponding to an idealization of the actual interaction in which the rules and basic elements are unambiguously defined.
Using the archetypes of game theory, it is possible to have an enhanced understanding of how to design conflict situations in which certain external factors, such as the one of social identity, can be manipulated and analysed in detail.
We propose a framework of social dilemmas to study both human and artificial behaviour. It was our intent that the framework was as general as possible, to be able to model different scenarios and to manipulate different factors influencing the decisions of players.
